August 23 Earthquake (then a hurricane a week later)! Twin Oaks was hit pretty hard by a powerful 5.8 quake — we were less than 4 miles from the epicenter. There was a tremendously loud thundering noise, and buildings shook extremely forcefully for 20 or 30 seconds. Most bedrooms and public spaces got a thick carpet of debris — books, clothing, food, furniture, bookshelves, broken glass, layered so thick that you couldn't see the floor in many spaces.

We suffered many broken water supply and drainage pipes and some gas lines. Water heaters fell over, some of them completely. ZK, our main dining hall, had some structural damage, and MT (auto building) walls were badly cracked and shored up soon after to some extent — we're still considering how to repair it. The brick chimney on Llano collapsed onto the path beside the building. We'll be dealing with all of the effects for months.

The best news is that, mercifully, no one out of the 100+ people here was seriously hurt. A few people had minor injuries — it really seems miraculous that we are all okay. Some photos can be seen here.

Hurricane Irene came through a week after the quake but did no damage in our immediate area.

Quake update 5/26/2012: there have been upwards of 80 aftershocks to date, some of them alarmingly strong, all of them accompanied by a sound similar to thunder.